2012 - The Year in Review

Mary Anne Matyaz

As we close in on the end of the world year, it seems only natural to take a look back at this year, from the MVS perspective. For many of us, 2012 started off with z/OS 1.13 upgrades, which went very well for me. In March, at SHARE in Atlanta, IBM’s Jeff Magdall announced the new z/OS two-year release cycle, to mixed responses. Some were relieved to be doing upgrades only every two years, others expressed concern about product enhancements out of cycle. The jury is still out, but from my perspective, things seem to be ok.

In April we learned via IBM Statement of Direction that the next release of z/OS would be called….2.1.

May brought several great PFA PTFs, many of them thanks to Sam Knutson’s efforts. In July MSM 5.0 came out.

In August, at SHARE in Anaheim, IBM’s Greg Lotko gave a great presentation and hinted at new things to come, but wouldn’t name names. We found out two weeks later, with the announcement of the EC12. As important as the box itself, is the zAware and zFlash announcements that came with it. Delving in to things a bit more, one finds transactional execution, an amazing advancement in multi-thread performance, among other enhancements.

The EC12 dominated the Z related news cycles for the rest of the year, and as analysts learned more and more about it, the media seems to have shifted subtly, away from ‘the mainframe is dead’ and more toward ‘the mainframe is healthy and growing!’ I think I speak for all of us when I say this is a trend that is very welcome.

2013 looks to be an exciting year, with z/OS 2.1 preview in the spring followed by availability sometime in the second half.

In closing, I’d like to wish all of you a very happy holiday season. May your performance runneth over, your outages and abends be few, and your managers be scarce.

Your link today is to performance wizard-ette and wonderful SHARE volunteer Cheryl Watson's website...http://www.watsonwalker.com/ If you're not signed up for "Cheryl's List", you should be.